Ministerial Presence: Perspectives of Four Unitarian Universalist Ministers

Ministerial Presence and Unitarian Universalists: A Qualitative Exploration Focused on the Views of Selected Ministers

James Beebe

Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies
Gonzaga University

Contact Information

Doctoral Leadership, Gonzaga University

502 E. Boone Ave.

Spokane WA 99258-2616

509 313 3484

Word Count: 5174

Ministerial Presenceand Unitarian Universalists: A Qualitative Exploration Focused on the Views of Selected Ministers

Decisions by Unitarian Universalists (UUs) to approve an individual for ordination or to select an individual to serve as the minister of a congregation often include references to “ministerial presence.” How this phrase is understood and whether ministerial presenceis seen as present can determine whether an individual becomes a minister or is selected to be the minister of a specific congregation. Semi-structured interviews with four Unitarian Universalist ministers suggest that the term is vague. Ministerial presence was associated with more than 30 different words of which (a) authenticity, (b) love and caring, and (c) spirituality received the most attention. The results suggest the concept of ministerial presence is vague and problematic.

Ministerial Presence and Unitarian Universalists: A Qualitative Exploration Focused on the Views of Selected Ministers

Unitarian Universalists describe themselves on their website (UUA About Us 2011) as a liberal religion with Jewish-Christian roots. The website notes there is no creed but that Unitarian Universalism affirms “the worth of human beings, advocates freedom of belief. Unitarian Universalists try "to provide a warm, open, supportive community for people who believe that ethical living is the supreme witness of religion.” The website also notes Unitarian Universalism combines the traditions of the Universalists, who formally organized in 1793; and the Unitarians, who formally organized in 1825. In 1961 they consolidated into the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). Both groups have their roots in North America but trace their heritage to pioneers in England, Poland, and Transylvania.

History and polity have impacted the selection process for ministers and provide the context for the discussion of ministerial presence. Unitarian Universalist congregations are democratic in polity and operation; meaning they select their own leaders, determine their own membership, decide who to ordain, select their own clergy, and pay their own way. Congregations govern themselves. They use the UUA to provide services that individual congregations cannot provide for themselves. Polity is loosely based on principles articulated in the Cambridge Platform of 1648 that holds that “there is no greater Church than a Congregation” but also calls for communication among congregations. In the past Unitarians and Universalists, and since they consolidated in 1961 Unitarians Universalists, have struggled with issues of autonomy and community. Nowhere is this conflict more obvious than in the process by which ministers are ordained and congregations call ministers.

It is the local congregation that ordains ministers and not the UUA. However, the UUA has a system of approving individuals for ordination in a process called “fellowshipping” and has a special unit for this purpose called the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC). The UUA also establishes the conditions that must be satisfied for fellowshipping. General requirements include a Masters of Divinity degree from an approved school, completion of an approved supervised Chaplain internship program (called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE)), a nine month ministerial internship, career assessment, approval by a Regional Sub-Committee on Candidacy, and approval from the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC). The Regional sub-Committee on Candidacy and the Ministerial Fellowship Committee play gate-keeping roles for anyone wanting to be a Unitarian Universalist minister and can decide: (a) the individual's journey toward ministry is over; (b) the individual needs more time but can request a revisit to the committee, or (c) the individual needs to satisfy specific additional requirements. The MFC decides if an individual can proceed to ordination. The MFC grants Preliminary Fellowship and after several years of successful full time ministry grants Final Fellowship (UUA Ordination 2011). Local congregations can, but rarely do, ordain or hire as their minister individuals who have not been fellowshipped by the MFC.

While working on my M.Div. at the Unitarian Universalist seminary MeadvilleLombard, I first heard about ministerial presence when classmates shared stories about experiences with the Regional Sub-Committees on Candidacy or the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. Stories about problems with these gate-keeping committees often concerned the difficulty the committees had with seeing “a minister” or ministerial presence in the applicant. It was clear that the concept of ministerial presence has a variety of meanings among Unitarian Universalists but is not clearly defined and had not been researched.

Scholarship on Ministerial Presence and Related Concepts

A search of journal articles in fields such as theology, seminary education, and ministry did not identify even one article where ministerial presence was discussed. However, there is considerable scholarship on the related concept of ministerial authority, a term that is sometimes used as synonymous with ministerial presence but usually carries a different meaning. According to Carroll,whose book As One with Authority: Reflective Leadership in Ministry (1991, 2011) is widely quoted, ministerial authority is legitimate power. Carroll (2011:1) stated, “To exercise authority involves influencing, coordinating, or otherwise guiding the thoughts and behavior of persons and groups in ways that they consider legitimate.” Other examples of scholarship on ministerial authority includes Lehman’s (2002) study primarily focused on women in ministry but reporting on issues of gender and authority, Luman’s (2003) study of what lay people want in pastors, and Hotchkiss’ (2009) book on church governance and short article on leadership and authority (2011).

Unitarian Universalists make limited use of the word authority. Schuler (2011) noted that among Unitarian Universalists there is “queasiness” about the influence clergy exert and that the Cambridge Platform was designed to “curtail” the authority of clergy. Schuler defined authority as “power freely conferred in consideration of services rendered” and observed it has two components: (a) positional and (b) personal. Positional authority is based on the office a person occupies. Personal authority is based on the respect and credibility and reflects the community’s estimation of the minister as a person.

A general web search found only a few references to ministerial presence as a characteristic of church ministers. The discussions of church ministerial presence concerned only Catholic priests and Unitarian Universalist ministers. Almost all of the references to ministerial presence of Unitarian Universalist ministers are references to observable personal characteristics of an individual and not references to power or the ability to influence the beliefs or actions of others. The term shows up on the UUA web site especially in reports on the role and activities of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee.

Cox (2003) described the MFC as listening to and watching a candidate for ministry for signs of “ministerial presence.” This observation was followed by the comment that eye contact and a good speaking pace were expected. Specific reference was made to actions based on compassion, professional boundaries, and an assumption about the good intentions of others. Cox indicated that some candidates passed despite mistakes in answers to questions, admissions of personal challenges with which they were still struggling, and the delivery of sermons that left room for improvement if they demonstrated they understood ministerial presence, “had reflected on it, and had accepted it.” Cox concluded that ministerial presence "communicates calm and confidence without arrogance.” Lloyd (2004) noted that a “gold standard is authenticity and integrity in your unique ministerial presence.”

Christine Robinson (2009) used the phrase ministerial authority in discussing what mostother Unitarian Universalists refer to as ministerial presence. Her comments are about how individuals beginning their careers in ministry are perceived by others and not about their ability to exercise power or bring about change. She questioned in her blog whether it is “a good idea” to expect persons to have developed a sense of ministerial authority before they are ordained. She argued that ministerial authority is a quality that exists and that it is related to feeling secure in the knowledge that the person in the ministerial role has something of value to deliver and knows the conditions of delivering it. She also suggested that a lack of ministerial authority is “far better” than fake ministerial authority. “Fake ministerial authority comes from a person acting the way they think they are supposed to act, rather than out of a deep knowledge of the value of their action.” She then reported that she started her own career “deficient” in ministerial authority and that it took her “many, many years” to develop it. Her bottom line was that internships, including CPE, might or might not provide a person with “a taste of ministerial authority,” but that “you don’t learn much about this until you are a settled minister.” Her conclusion was that it is inappropriate to expect someone to demonstrate that she/he has figured out ministerial authority at the time of Preliminary Fellowshipping and that “entry into Preliminary Fellowship should be a much broader gate.”

There are numerous Unitarian Universalist web sites maintained by individual churches that contain sermons that include the terms ministerial presence. Several sites described their minister or a minister they were in the process of calling as possessing ministerial presence but there was little that defined the term. Two notable exceptions are sermons by John Weston (2005) and Victoria Weinstein (2004). Both Weston and Weinstein focused on the “presence” aspect of ministerial presence. Weston noted that the presence of the minister should have an impact on how others live. Weston referred to the presence of the minister having theability to move growth forward.

Weinstein also noted that the Ministerial Fellowship Committee wants “to see a minister” and that the candidate is expected to have that “elusive” thing called “ministerial presence.” According to Weinstein, trying to figure out how to get presence and deciding whether or not you have it is “one of the major causes of anxiety among seminarians.” Weinstein identified the minister's job as constantly preparing to be present and especially being present on the spiritual journey of others. Weinstein advised ministers to “show up” and “stay awake and pay attention.” He observed that the call to be present“sounds good” but does not give much direction about what one is supposed to do.

Implicit in both Weston’s and Weinstein’s description of ministerial presence is that the minister’s presence has an impact on those around her or him. While neither Weston nor Weinstein explicitly linked ministerial presence with power or leadership, others, including some of the participants in this study, identified ministerial presence with leadership. The leadership associated with ministerial presence appears to be somewhat related to Max Weber's concept of charismatic authority. Kendall (2006:570) identified charismatic authority as“power legitimized on the basis of a leader's exceptional personal qualities or the demonstration of extraordinary insight and accomplishment that inspire loyalty and obedience from followers.” It has been observed that charismatic authority often involves mission and spiritual duty and that it is often associated with religion. Weber ([1947] 1997:358-362) claimed that the idea of charismatic authority emerged from the sociology of religion.

Methodology

The purpose of this study was to explore the understanding of the concept of ministerial presence from the perspective of Unitarian Universalist ministers. It is the focus on understanding issues from the perspective of insiders that makes this qualitative research. Sherman and Webb (1988:7) suggested that qualitative research “has the aim of understanding experience as nearly as possible as its participants feel it or live it.” Miles and Huberman (1994:6) noted that the goal of qualitative search is to capture perceptions “from the insider.” Because the intent of qualitative research is not to generalize but to explore the specific, most approaches to qualitative research are based on the study of a few individuals ranging in number from 1 to 10, with 3 to 5 participants being common (Creswell 2007:126-127).

The main research technique for this type of qualitative research is the semi-structured interview. Metzler (1997:12) suggested the interview should be “a two-person conversational exchange of information on behalf of an unseen audience to produce a level of enlightenment neither participant could produce alone.” A frequently citied definition of this type of interviewing is “conversation with a purpose” (Gubrium and Hoistein 2001:50).

Prior to the interviews, I developed a brief list of topics I wanted to cover. Four participants were interviewed. Informed consent was discussed with all participants and all signed forms allowing for the use of their names. All participants were given the opportunity to review the results before they were finalized. Two interviews were face-to-face and two were by phone. Interviews were about 50 minutes long, audio recorded, and transcribed. Software for the analysis of qualitative data (NVivo) was used for initial coding and identification of themes. The four participants were selected to maximize differences in background, with accessibility being a factor. Participants included a retired male parish minister, a current male parish minister, a female who shares parish ministry with her husband, and a female community minister.

The Participants

Participants were asked to describe themselves.

Barbara Wells ten Hove was raised Unitarian Universalist. She graduated from Meadville Lombard in 1985. Her father was a UU minister. At the time of the interview, she and her husband, Jaco, shared the ministry of Paint Branch church in Adelphi, Maryland. She described being active in young adult ministry, serving on various UUA committees and boards, and teaching part-time at Meadville Lombard.

William Houff grew up on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. He described his parents as “very loving people,” who believed in “an angry, judgmental God who exacted punishment for transgressions.” In response to his questions about this, his mother told him “William you shouldn't ask questions like that. It might make God angry and he might strike you down dead.” When he went off to college he “swore” that he was through with church. He studied chemistry in college, became an organic chemist, researcher, faculty member, and then worked in industry. While working in upstate New York, he discovered a Unitarian Church and quickly became an active member. When he moved to California, still as a chemist, he became very involved with a Unitarian Church in the San Francisco Bay area. He decided to study for the Unitarian Ministry and went to the Unitarian Universalist seminary Starr King. He was ordained in 1964 and eventually was called as the minister of the Spokane church. He retired from the Spokane church before he“went on the road doing interims.” In 1998 he retired for “the third and final” time.

Jean Heroit is a community minister who received her M.Div. in 1999 from the Pacific School of Religion. She had received a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from UCLA in 1979. As an anthropologist, her focus was the anthropology of religion. Her community ministry is based on a position at Hastings College, a Presbyterian affiliated school in Hastings, Nebraska. At the time of the interview she was the Associate Director of Vocational Discernment and Service Learning and worked with students to help them assess their callings and the relevance of their gifts to opportunities for involvement. She described a part of what she does as working with local communities to find out their needs, matching students with community needs, and then helping the students reflect on their service to the community. She described reflection as a purposeful inquiry leading to action and contrasted this with “navel gazing.”

At the time of the interview, Richard Erhardt had been the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane, Washington for three years. Spokane is the first place outside of the metropolitan New York City area he had lived. He had about 13 years experience as UU minister. Before that he was a professional food photographer.

Developing an Understanding of the Term “Ministerial Presence”

All four of the participants volunteered reference to the difficulty of defining the concept of ministerial presence. Ministerial presence was called intangible, intuitive, confusing, vague, and nebulous. Jean started her comments on ministerial presence by saying “I don't have a very clear understanding” and she then added that she thought that was true for a lot of other people. Jean declined to provide a summary definition for ministerial presence. Richard suggested that he was not sure he knew what ministerial presence means and that “nobody knew what the hell" it means.